Economists and other social scientists typically rely on gender differences in
the family-career balance, discrimination, and ability to explain gender gaps in wages
and in the prospect for advancement. A new explanation that has recently surfaced in the
economics literature is that men are more competitively inclined than women, and having
a successful career requires competitiveness. A natural question revolves around the
underlying determinants of these documented competitive differences: are women
simply born less competitive, or do they become so through the process of socialization?
To shed light on this issue, we compare the competitiveness of children in matrilineal and
patriarchal societies to show that the difference starts around puberty. Moreover, most of
the changes during this period of life are within the patriarchal society, in which
boys become more competitive with age while girls become less competitive.